"Avete una birra straniera?"
Translation:Do you have a foreign beer?
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2395
We use foreign beer more frequently than imported over here in England. We'd probably call your beer American though.
1144
Who cares? This is a course designed to learn Italian, not English. You should be interested in the meaning of the Italian, not how it's rendered in English.
332
If we are not interested in how it is rendered in English, then we will continue to get the translations wrong.
Yes, you are absolutely right, but I think that they want to focus on "UNA birra". Like, sure, if you are translating this sentence for an article or whatever, you would want it to make sense, and be natural, so you would translate it to "do you have any foreign beer?" But I think that the reason they translate most sentences literally is so they can underline and focus on the sentence in ITALIAN per se, not the way it is used in English. Honestly, thus, I see the difference much more clearly.
But since we're striving and also are obliged to make the only correct translation, even if, in this context, the literal sense is "foreign", at least "imported" needed to be added to the possible correct translations. I guess they should've know what translation actually means and how it functions.
There probably is a different word for imported and it probably wouldn't make too much sense in Italian. Remember it is our responsibility to interpret the translation to best suit the situation. "foreigner/foreign beer" can easily be readjusted to "imported beer", it just takes an extra second to recognize what either duo or the speaker is trying to convey.
I think the word "foreign" is used more and more often in a negative way in the UK. As in "I don't drink foreign beer, give me something British!" In a pub I would definitely recommend asking for either "imported beer" or being even more specific, eg "Do you have any German beer?" or "Do you have Peroni?"